The role of internet marketing in e-commerce. Encyclopedia of Marketing. eCommerce Marketing Transformation

Kaluzhsky M.L. Magazine "Practical Marketing". – 2013. – No. 1. – P. 4-16. – ISSN 2071-3762

The second most important thing in Internet marketing is pricing policy. On the one hand, this is due to an objective reduction transaction costs for sellers, due to which small virtual entities can compete with large traditional market participants. On the other hand, the main motive for making an online purchase if the product is available is its comparatively lower price. Transaction costs in e-commerce are much lower than in conventional trading. Therefore, the price opportunities for attracting buyers from virtual companies are much greater than in traditional businesses.

Only third place in importance in Internet marketing is occupied by product policy. This circumstance is due to the fact that virtual companies are not engaged in production and do not promote goods, but information about goods. E-commerce provides significantly greater mobility in choosing goods and suppliers than conventional trade. In the network economy, competitive advantage in the market is created not by products, but by methods of their promotion. The strategic winner is not the one who has the goods, but the one who has the ability to promote them. Best example– Internet auction “eBay” with revenue in 2011 of $11.65 billion (an increase of 27%) and net profit of $3.23 billion (an increase of 79%).

Last in importance in Internet marketing is communication policy - just like in the traditional marketing mix. It is very simple to prove this thesis, since communications are unable to promote a product if the product: a) is not available, b) is more expensive than analogues, d) does not meet consumer expectations. This tool only works when there are no problems with the previous three internet marketing tools.

The tools of Internet marketing, like the tools of the traditional marketing mix, fit into the framework of the well-known “4P” concept. Four elements are quite enough to reveal the main directions, tools and methods of Internet marketing in the network economy. The difference lies only in changing the order of the elements of the marketing mix.

Element I. Sales policy in Internet marketing.

Sales policy in Internet marketing includes three main components of traditional marketing: exchange and transactions, relationships between partners and interaction with customers. However, the specifics of virtual space fill them with new, different content:

1. Exchange and transactions. According to classical marketing theory, exchange is at the core of any commercial activity. “Marketing appears at that moment,” writes F. Kotler, “when people decide to satisfy needs and wants through exchange.” Whereas transactions in marketing theory are understood as “the exchange of values between two or more parties.”

A transaction becomes possible when the values, needs and interests of the parties involved in the transaction coincide. In Internet marketing, the basic value is not the product, but electronic sales channels. They ensure profit and are the main factor of competitiveness by reducing transaction costs.

And as long as there is an imbalance in transaction costs between traditional trade and e-commerce, the guaranteed profits from using electronic distribution channels will be more important than the inconsistent profits from traditional forms of marketing.

A consequence of the development of e-commerce has been a reduction in the role of traditional trading infrastructure in transactions. If the importance of warehouse and transport infrastructure remains virtually unchanged, then the trade infrastructure (counters, showrooms, sellers, etc.) is successfully replaced by electronic catalogs and price lists. Therefore the main function sales policy in Internet marketing does not mean the creation of sales channels, but the use of opportunities available on the network in order to ensure the presence of goods in various segments of the virtual market.

The trading infrastructure in traditional marketing was a large number of intermediaries with backlogs of supplies, inventory, specifics of sales markets and related supplier problems. If the goods were supplied on an advance payment basis, then the intermediaries ordered a limited quantity of goods, demanded increased discounts and easily made contact with competitors. If the goods were sold on consignment, then the intermediaries became overstocked, turnover slowed down and problems began with payment for supplies. Moreover, each level of the distribution channel provided a trade premium in the amount from the minimum profitability to infinity, depending on the distance of the supplier and the degree of monopolization of the geographic market.

In e-commerce, distances have lost importance, and the trade infrastructure (wholesale and retail links) has fallen out of trading network. What happened was what P. Doyle called the “separation of information from the product,” when the intermediary deals not with goods, but with information about these goods. As a result, commodity flows in distribution channels gave way to information flows, and trade in goods turned into information support direct supply of goods.

The result was the involvement of more participants in the process of selling goods while simultaneously blurring the boundaries between advertising activities, consumer behavior and retail trade. This allowed online intermediaries to provide an offer with the maximum range and minimum costs. Provided there is sufficient logistics support, members of distribution channels in Internet marketing do not require either their own warehouses or retail space, nor sales staff. The manufacturer himself or through logistics intermediaries ensures the possibility of offering goods (availability of goods, delivery conditions and payment acceptance).

The organization of sales is undertaken by the network community, which can consist of both specialized traders and united buyers. However, there is no formal institutional framework, and the transition from the role of buyer to the role of seller can occur almost instantly.

2. Relationships between partners. The development of e-commerce has led not only to a change in sales policy in Internet marketing, but also to a change in the nature of the relationships between participants in the sales system. This is due to the emergence of such a concept as “e-sourcing”, which is understood as “tools that allow you to identify potential suppliers and, during negotiations, negotiate with them the conditions leading to the lowest costs.”

Thanks to e-sourcing, the implementation of sales functions and the distribution of orders have finally moved from the sphere of management to the sphere of marketing. The transformation has become so profound that it has required a radical overhaul of the content and functionality of some of the foundational marketing tools. This primarily affected advertising. E-commerce has turned the very essence of online advertising inside out, turning it from a communication activity into a sales activity.

What is a typical advertising intermediary? This is a person who provides paid intermediary services in conveying information about a product to potential consumers. However, the advertising intermediary bears absolutely no responsibility to the customer for the effectiveness of advertising. It is no coincidence that the effectiveness of advertising is still assessed in the number of views, audience coverage, frequency of impressions, etc. - in anything, but not in indicators reflecting changes in the customer’s sales figures as a result of advertising events. Advertisers do not need such responsibility.

This was the case until the Internet transformed from a communication channel into a product sales channel. The main reason for the transformation is that suppliers do not need advertising and resellers. Suppliers need sales. E-commerce has led to the emergence of a new hybrid type of intermediaries that simultaneously perform advertising and sales functions. However, since advertising activity is secondary in relation to sales, it simply disappeared into it.

New intermediaries, in exchange for their services, along with a trade discount, receive the right to sell the supplier’s goods on the Internet without having them in stock.

They do not create inventories at home and do not create turnover costs for the supplier. They compete with each other by promoting (advertising) the supplier's products on the Internet. Their audience has no geographical restrictions, and their offers are concentrated on target audiences. It is these intermediaries that represent electronic distribution channels in Internet marketing today. Suppliers receive through Internet intermediaries not only a trading infrastructure, a tool for accelerating turnover and a source of information about market conditions, but also free promotion (advertising). They pay for this promotion with a trade discount. However, unlike traditional advertising, payment for intermediary services is strictly dependent on sales indicators, and sales indicators depend on the flexibility of intermediaries.

This is a fundamentally important trend in Internet marketing. E-commerce leads to increased integration between trading partners, which is expressed not only in the delegation of authority to sell goods to counterparties, but also in the delegation of responsibility for this sale. This was not possible in traditional marketing.

3.Interaction with customers. Changes in the relationship between sellers and buyers associated with Internet marketing are due to a fundamental change in the essence of the relationship between seller and buyer. Through the Internet, not only the retailer, but also the manufacturer is able to “reach” every customer. For example, through the provision of services after registering on the site and filling out a questionnaire.

Traditional marketing theory distinguishes two types of marketing, distinguished by diametrically opposed approaches to organization marketing activities. These approaches determine the principles and mechanisms of interaction with potential buyers.

The first type, consumer marketing, is characterized by the lack of proper information among buyers about the real quality of the product. Consumers are guided not by the product, but by the existing stereotype of perception of the product. This implies the primacy of methods and forms of promotion associated mainly with advertising and PR.

The second type, industrial marketing, is distinguished by the fact that buyers have thorough knowledge, if not about the product itself, then about the features of its use. Here, competitive advantage is determined by the level of technological excellence of the product, and the main method of promotion is direct sales.

In traditional marketing, in both cases it was primarily about marketing communications. However, in Internet marketing, communications have ceased to play a decisive role for the following reasons:

for individual consumers detailed information information about the product and its use (including negative information) has become publicly available, and the advertising push for the product has lost its effectiveness;
industrial consumers have the opportunity to quickly receive competitive offers and Additional information from all over the market, making visits from sales representatives unnecessary.

In the traditional trade chain, not only buyers, but also the manufacturer (supplier) had very limited opportunities to collect marketing information about the state of consumer demand. Retailers were not interested in collecting such information for the manufacturer of a particular product. They had thousands of products in their inventory, and they were physically unable to collect market and competitor marketing information for each supplier.

This problem could be partially solved through an authorized dealership system, exclusive discounts, etc.

In this case, the most typical traders in exchange for special conditions supplies provide the supplier with information about consumers and competitors. However, the adequacy and efficiency of market information received by the supplier from counterparties was still inversely related to the length of sales channels.

Internet marketing has radically changed the situation in favor of manufacturers and suppliers. Despite the fact that goods are sold to end consumers through intermediaries, the length of distribution channels has been significantly reduced, and manufacturers have gained complete control over them. Even if the product is sold by a reseller and shipped by a logistics intermediary, the sales process is organized and received by the supplier.

Element II. Pricing policy in Internet marketing. Pricing and pricing policy in e-commerce develop under conditions close to those of ideal competition. No supplier can restrict buyers' access to pricing information and competitive offers. No intermediary is capable of monopolizing the market and dictating terms to the supplier. Moreover, buyers freely exchange information about products among themselves on specialized forums and on social networks.

At the same time, natural savings on transaction costs give online sellers significant price advantages compared to traditional trade. It is this advantage that is the main incentive for buyers to make online purchases. Moreover, the involvement of manufacturers in e-commerce radically changes not only pricing policy, but the approach to pricing itself. The vector of efforts of virtualizing companies is directed from the area of sales (which is difficult to influence) to the area of further reducing costs and thereby obtaining new price advantages (which is easy and simple to influence).

As a result, competition moves from the sphere of struggle for the market to the sphere of adaptation to market needs. The paradox of the situation is that the fight against competitors gives way to their cooperation in reducing not only transaction costs, but also any other costs. If there are ten competitors on the market, but only three of them cooperate, uniting to reduce costs and solve joint problems, then they will objectively be more competitive. An example is the IT company Covisint, created in 2004 by the automobile concerns Ford, General Motors, DaimlerChrysler, Nissan and Renault. The main goal of the project was to reduce the cost of producing one car “by $1,000 by consolidating suppliers, accelerating the design and development of new models, optimizing models and reducing warehouse stocks» .

Today, only large retailers that are successfully developing this market today can resist the expansion of e-commerce. However, their Internet marketing capabilities are limited by their own specifics. Retailers sell products they have in stock. Despite supplier benefits and huge volumes, there are large inventories and significant transaction costs.

Typically, suppliers ship goods to the retailer on credit. They are not interested in new deliveries to fully pay for previous shipments, even if the product is outdated or not in demand. Therefore, retail remains most competitive in the market for everyday goods with a long life cycle.

Virtual companies, on the contrary, trade in someone else’s goods, shipped from the seller’s warehouse or from the warehouse of a logistics intermediary. They always have the latest models and modifications of goods and never have unsold balances. The supplier ships the goods directly to customers and receives full payment in advance. Therefore, in the field of high-tech consumer goods with a short life cycle, virtual companies always find themselves out of competition. At the same time, traditional pricing policy tools (discounts, bonuses, credits for purchases, price discrimination, etc.) are also present in modern Internet marketing.

However, the main trump card of Internet marketing for virtual companies is the ability to competitively reduce prices by reducing transaction costs. Price competition products and brands with the transition of marketing to the Internet has become a competition of transaction costs. While traditional companies set the upper limit for the price of goods with their costs, virtual companies will enjoy the benefits of more low prices due to lower transaction costs.

This strategy radically changes the pricing process in marketing. Previously, transaction and production costs determined the seller's base price in the ceteris paribus category. They were approximately equal and equally accessible to all market participants. The marketing policy consisted of positioning new (or seemingly new) products on the market at inflated prices and then making a profit from the difference between the base price and the selling price.

Internet marketing, on the contrary, uses the prices of traditional manufacturers as its base price. At the same time, sellers are based not on the price perceptions of buyers, but on the prevailing prices in traditional trade (Table 2). It is no coincidence that the overwhelming number of advertising campaigns in Internet marketing are based on price comparisons with traditional trade.

Table 2. Features of pricing in internet marketing

Some foreign authors point to another important aspect of the use of pricing in Internet marketing, considering pricing policy as “a lever that helps manage demand.” This idea is not new. In traditional marketing theory, it is implemented through the use of demarketing and remarketing. The simplest example: inflating prices in order to reduce demand due to the inability to satisfy it or, conversely, understating prices in order to stimulate sales. In electronic commerce, this approach has also been filled with new content. Price here, as in traditional marketing, is a tool for ensuring a balance between supply and demand.

However, customers cannot be manipulated with the same ease online. It's not like the only store in a village, where the only option is to pay more or go to another village with unpredictable results. Here prices are near the minimum profitability, profit is achieved through increased sales volumes, and competitive offers are visible to every buyer. The “price fork” for manipulating prices here is small. It is limited from below by the supplier's selling prices, and from above by a high level of competition.

Therefore, in Internet marketing, pricing strategies do not play as important a role as in traditional marketing. Rather, there is a general economic pattern at work here, according to which only monopolists (for example, logistics intermediaries) are able to inflate prices. Ordinary market participants are able to compete either by deepening cooperation or by increasing market coverage and sales volume.

Something else is much more important. Pricing policy in Internet marketing allows you to solve logistics problems that arise in the process of organizing product distribution (for example, delays in deliveries and consumer complaints). Problems are resolved through the division of responsibilities, while the buyer is given the right to choose the terms of delivery and the associated price.

If traditional marketing is dominated by the establishment of the final price by the seller, then in Internet marketing the seller sets only the selling price, and the buyer himself chooses the logistics intermediary and the risks associated with it. Thus, the seller is responsible only for the delivery of the goods to the logistics intermediary, who independently enters into legal relations with the buyer. For example, when buying a product on the Internet, the buyer chooses a delivery method: regular mail, EMS or transport company. The easiest way is regular mail, but it is slow and there is a high risk of damage (theft) of the goods. High-speed mail EMS or DHL delivers quickly, but is expensive. By refusing part of the profit in favor of logistics intermediaries, online sellers simultaneously transfer to them the burden of responsibility to customers. This leads to an even greater reduction in transaction costs and allows you to focus only on organizing online sales.

In addition, virtual companies use the most important factor Success in marketing is a factor of time. No one is able to make and implement pricing decisions as quickly as virtual companies.

Virtual companies have no problems either updating price tags or maintaining accounting records. They deal with intangible (information) resources and can “offer faster payments and solutions throughout the supply chain.” This circumstance is due to the fact that although everything ultimately comes down to the sale of real goods, the area of decision-making on prices is located in virtual space.

Element III. Product policy in Internet marketing. According to marketing theory, a product is “anything that can be offered to satisfy a human want or need. … The significance of material products lies not so much in their possession as in their ability to satisfy certain needs.”

An important advantage of Internet technologies is that they enable sellers to move from selectively collecting information about real demand for goods to receiving complete information about it automatically “24-7-365”. Based on this advantage, a new concept has even been formed in the theory of Internet marketing, called the “individual marketing concept.”

According to this concept, the greatest sales effectiveness is achieved by providing consumers with personalized goods and services of higher value through interactive communications. The point is that not only does the buyer have value to the company, but the company also has value to the buyer if it best satisfies his needs. Refusal of the services of such a company leads to unjustified losses of time and effort (transaction costs) for the buyer to establish relations with the new seller.

In traditional marketing, no one even thought about buyer transaction costs. The main parameters of the offer there are the properties of the product and its price - the first two elements of the marketing mix. This was due to the relative inaccessibility to buyers of information about the entire range of competitive offers. Buyers often did not have the time or opportunity to collect information about products and compare offers on the market.

In Internet marketing, information about almost all competitive offers on the market can be easily found within a few minutes. The individual characteristics of the product are gradually moving into the “all other things being equal” category, and the sales conditions are approaching the conditions perfect competition. A product is either on the market or it is not there. Therefore, goods in the traditional sense have largely lost their marketing appeal for sellers. As P. Doyle notes: “In modern economy The service sector is twice as large as the manufacturing sector, and is growing much faster.”

As a result, there was a transformation of the semantic content of the very concept of “product”. Goods began to be called logistics services for searching, purchasing, delivering and paying for what was previously called goods. Competition in Internet marketing has shifted from the sphere of commodity production to the sphere of logistics support for sales. Therefore, a kind of starting point in the formation of the foundations of product policy in Internet marketing was not general marketing, but marketing of services that has certain specifics. The concept of “internal marketing” has been around for quite some time. “The purpose of internal marketing,” writes F. Kotler, “is to help employees provide the client with goods or services with which he will be satisfied.”

In other words, internal marketing is directed inside the company in order to increase its adequacy to market requirements. This leads to the peculiarities of distribution of marketing powers. If in product marketing the marketing department does the lion's share marketing functions, then in the service sector, on the contrary, the marketing department accounts for their minimal part. The main marketing burden in the service sector falls on the shoulders of employees who directly interact with clients.

In Internet marketing, product policy in the service sector is filled with new, additional content. Instead of internal company personnel, internal marketing is reoriented to logistics intermediaries performing its functions.

What is happening is what P. Doyle called “the disintegration of value chains and the reform of industries.” Participants in the online commerce process have absolute independence in relation to each other. Each of them provides consumers with its own service in its field of activity.

Integration of the efforts of supply chain participants under a single leadership in Internet marketing is practically absent. This is the basis of their competitiveness, since each subject of marketing activity goes beyond the boundaries of their industry, thus diversifying their market potential. For example, the same logistics intermediary, due to its narrow specialization can equally successfully participate in the promotion of medical services and the improvement of automotive technologies.

All marketing efforts in Internet marketing product policy are aimed not at ensuring a unique selling proposition (USP), but at satisfying the individual needs of consumers. As P. Doyle notes: “Production [of services and goods] to order, not for orders.” Hence the main marketing task of virtual companies is to find a competitive niche in the market and hold it for as long as possible. Such a niche may be associated either with more or less exclusive supply conditions, or with a competitive presence in a narrow target market. IN general theory marketing, this approach to organizing marketing is called the “network approach”.

The network approach implies that each participant in the distribution network has a certain status, understood as the role it plays in relation to its partners. The goal of marketing within the network approach is to acquire a winning status in the network, and then strengthen and protect its position. The basic idea is that each network participant depends on the resources controlled by its partners. Using their status in the network, the firm gains access to their resources. Therefore, the status of the company in the network itself becomes a market resource. The network approach has received the greatest development in retail networks and industrial marketing.

The fundamental difference between Internet marketing and traditional marketing is that here the network approach is used not in sales, but in product policy. If in traditional marketing the network position was acquired by the dominant participant in the distribution channel, then in Internet marketing the uniqueness of its position in the network is determined by the reaction of end consumers. That is why, in the Internet marketing complex, the components “product” and sales (place) have swapped places, but the network approach’s belonging to the third element of the marketing complex has remained unchanged.

From the perspective of the theory of consumer behavior, in e-commerce there has been a peculiar transfer of transaction costs from producers to buyers. They choose which logistics intermediaries they will use. “The challenge of marketing,” note M. Christopher and H. Pack, “is to find ways to increase customer value by improving the quality of perceived benefits and/or reducing total operating costs.”

It can even be argued that product policy in Internet marketing places the main emphasis not so much on reducing the costs of promotion participants, but on reducing the costs of buyers. Thanks to this, on the one hand, greater freedom of choice is provided for buyers, and on the other, the attractiveness of the product offering increases.

The essence of the new approach is the recognition that the buyer does not need a huge assortment of products, which is secondary in Internet marketing. The buyer needs a specific product with the required parameters that best satisfies his needs. The seller’s task is not just to offer the maximum assortment, but to take into account the individual needs of each specific buyer. Only then will buyers, having received the desired product with minimal effort and time, enter into a long-term relationship with the seller, providing him with profit, network status and future sales volumes.

Therefore, it is quite difficult to sell an ordinary widely available product on the Internet. The product must be individualized for a specific buyer. In other words, according to some parameters, the offer of goods in traditional trade should not suit the buyer. Internet marketing promotes not those products that are in abundance, but those that are in demand. The buyer comes to the Internet to find “his” product quickly and with minimal transaction costs. The one who can offer every potential buyer “his” product will become the leader in electronic sales.

The individualization of the product offering has led to a change in the general vector of marketing activities. Logistics intermediaries offering goods have become owners of information about the state of market demand, acting in relations with suppliers on behalf of buyers. In other words, instead of selling goods to customers on behalf of the supplier, they began to exchange benefits and discounts for suppliers for the opportunity to purchase goods in target markets they controlled.

Element IV. Communication policy in Internet marketing. The development of online commerce has significantly changed the nature of marketing communications. From a tool of informational influence on the audience, communications have turned into a tool for dialogue with customers and counterparties, as well as a tool for making collective decisions in Internet marketing. Thanks to the Internet, they have become interactive.

F. Kotler writes: “Today communications are viewed as an interactive dialogue between a company and its consumers. They are carried out at the stages before the purchase, its completion, consumption and after consumption." Sellers were able to operate with marketing information not only about each product, but also about each buyer, about each purchase of this buyer. This made it possible to combine two mutually exclusive approaches to building marketing communications: transaction marketing and relationship marketing.

Transaction marketing initially dominated the marketing practices of companies in the United States and Japan due to their export orientation and the long length of trade channels. It means a focus on selling standardized products mass demand mass buyers. Relationship marketing dominated the practice of European companies due to their high costs and limited markets. It means establishing long-term relationships with customers and a personalized approach to serving them.

Internet marketing has made markets limitless and allowed for personalized service to a large number of customers. On the one hand, communications with target audiences and individual clients have become possible on the Internet. On the other hand, it became possible to automate the maintenance of marketing databases and individual contacts with partners and clients. As a result Marketing communications on the Internet were individualized, automated and depersonalized at the same time.

Communications became the first element of the marketing mix, actively used on the Internet even when e-commerce was in its infancy. This probably explains the fact that today communications have largely passed the path of evolutionary development from an information distribution tool to a set of unified and automated functions.

This circumstance has led to the formation of a special type of logistics intermediaries responsible for ensuring information interaction in the virtual environment. We are talking about the use of the so-called in communications. “CRM-systems” (Customer Relationship Management) – software automation of interaction with customers and contractors. CRM systems are used today to collect and process marketing information, as well as to speed up exchange commercial information both within the firm and between partners.

A CRM system as a model of interaction with partners in online marketing makes the client the main object marketing analysis. This is the fundamental difference between CRM and logistics automated systems, where the object of analysis is the internal economic parameters of logistics flows. The main purpose of CRM systems is to provide automation processes for electronic sales and customer service on the Internet. CRM systems automate the collection, processing and analysis of information about contractors, suppliers and consumers, as well as information flows within companies of varying degrees of virtuality.

An example is the CRM system of the German company SAPAG. The core of this system is a client database, on the basis of which users analyze the effectiveness of their contacts with clients, client connections, the history of their purchases, contracts, etc. As stated in the company’s reference manual, the CRM system “allows you to analyze clients in various aspects and build models of their behavior, including based on the history of working with them.” Using the capabilities of CRM systems, the seller can determine in advance the target audience for marketing communications, sales potential, offer parameters and other characteristics of communications. All that remains is to bring commercial offers to those buyers in the target market who really need them. Fortunately, Internet technologies allow you to do both automatically, sometimes even without human intervention.

Technologization concerns all components of communications in Internet marketing, turning them into purely technical functions for product promotion. It is no coincidence that F. Kotler points out that e-commerce is changing the purpose of advertising, which in Internet marketing is “more informational than persuasive.”

In e-commerce, where all processes are automated and virtualized, communication solutions are gradually turning into a set of options on a virtual control panel for purchases and sales. At the same time, for users, the evolution of Internet applications goes in the opposite direction: from complex to simple. First, an ever-increasingly complex mechanism for virtual marketing solutions to the problem appears. Then the mechanism, inaccessible to non-professionals, is replaced by easy-to-manage and relatively cheap Internet services.

As an example, we can cite the once so popular SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - search engine optimization of websites, which is “the process of achieving first places in search results in search engines for queries targeted for a company.” Just a few years ago, e-commerce was associated with the creation of online stores, the traffic of which directly depended on the ranking of information about the site in the search engines Yandex, Google, Rambler, etc. It still exists great amount virtual companies offering to “raise” a site’s rating for a reasonable fee.

At the same time, technologies for calculating the ranking of Internet resources by search engines were being improved. The process has become so complicated that it is impossible for a person without deep knowledge on this subject to understand the intricacies and tricks of SEO optimization. However, today the consolidation of Internet business and the development of e-commerce technologies allows sellers to communicate with consumers without SEO tricks, creating websites or attracting programmers.

For example, the Molotok trading platform offers free creation and maintaining an online store with a logo and a unique address for legal entities. The commission ranges from 2 to 5.5% from the sale of goods. Registered sellers receive free sales management tools and access to an audience of 500,000 potential buyers transacting over 10,000 transactions daily. Registered users of Molotok can use free options for organizing promotional sales of products with discounts or paid options for displaying products on the main page.

Registered sellers no longer need to trick search engines by promoting their websites online. Any novice entrepreneur can, without special knowledge and effort, open his own store on an electronic trading platform, taking advantage of all the advantages of electronic commerce. This is the key trend in the development of marketing Internet communications and online trading in general. The increasing accessibility of e-commerce is simultaneously driven by the increasing complexity of Internet technologies for developers and the simplification of marketing solutions for end users. Communications develop on the Internet not vertically, but horizontally.

An important feature of marketing communications on the Internet is that the virtualization of electronic sales leads not only to “disintegration of value chains.” Buyers, thanks to the individualization of sales, become full participants in marketing relations. They themselves form virtual communities with resellers, interacting directly with suppliers of goods. For example, when young mothers join forces social network to order a batch of children's clothing. As a result, the line between external and internal marketing is blurred. Regular customers become part of the virtual sales infrastructure and the recipient of transforming intra-company (internal) communications. They themselves begin to actively engage in reverse marketing aimed at intermediaries and the seller, and influence the marketing decisions made.

As a result, the sphere of internal marketing is shifting to the sphere of marketing communications. The classic of American marketing theory F. Kotler identifies four main areas in internal marketing of the service sector. In Internet marketing, these areas have changed and institutionalized, but have not lost their relevance:

As a result, marketing communications lose their original role as a stimulator of consumer demand, turning into a technical tool for information interaction. The buyer only benefits from this, since he does not have to pay the costs of expensive advertising campaigns and the adequacy of the information provided to him increases significantly.

To summarize, it should be noted that, despite the restructuring of the marketing mix in the context of e-commerce, the essence, goals, objectives and functions of marketing have not undergone significant changes. Internet marketing has become an independent and self-sufficient form of marketing, with its unique features and implementation mechanisms.

On the agenda today is the further institutionalization of the relationships that have developed within the framework of e-commerce and the formation of a special theory of Internet marketing, reflecting its institutional features and priorities. This process is likely to be a key area of marketing transformation as e-commerce booms in the coming years.

M.L. Kaluzhsky

annotation: An article about the transformation of the theory and practice of marketing in the conditions of e-commerce and the network economy. The author considers Internet marketing as an independent type of marketing in a virtual communication environment. The main thesis of the article: the virtual environment determines the transformation of marketing, changing the methods, priorities and structure first of practice and then of marketing theory.

Keywords: e-commerce; marketing; Internet Marketing; marketing mix.

Transformation of marketing in the e-commerce

Annotation: The article is about transformation of the theory and practice of marketing in the conditions of e-commerce and network economy. The author considers Internet-marketing as an independent kind of marketing in the virtual communicative environment. The basic thesis of the article: the virtual environment defines marketing transformation, changing methods, priorities and structure at practice and then theories of marketing.

Keywords: e-commerce, marketing, Internet-marketing, marketing-mix.

eCommerce Marketing Transformation

Kaluzhsky Mikhail Leonidovich (Omsk, Omsk State Technical University, [email protected])

The rapid development of e-commerce in last years could not but affect the theory and practice of promoting goods in World Wide Web. Marketing has not just developed new techniques for online trading. On the basis of traditional marketing, repeatedly described in textbooks, the so-called marketing strategy was formed. “Internet marketing”, the distinctive feature of which is that all network participants are in relatively equal starting conditions. Internet marketing has the same structure as traditional marketing, but operates at a qualitatively different level of economic relations.

The main area of Internet marketing efforts is transaction costs and new opportunities associated with their reduction. Therefore, the primary role here is played not by product policy (as in traditional marketing), not by communication policy (as in the industrial economy), or even by marketing research (see Table 1). A primary role in Internet marketing is played by sales policy, which makes it possible to make a product available to the maximum number of potential buyers.

Table1 . Transformation of the marketing mix on the Internet

This is a very important thesis, according to which The Internet in the network economy primarily performs marketing functions. Subjects of the network economy do not come to the Internet for communications or marketing research. They view the Internet as a separate large market in which there is a low barrier to entry and equal competitive opportunities. Everything else is secondary. It is no coincidence that economic activity on the Internet is called “network commerce”, i.e. " buying and selling process» via the Internet.

The second most important thing in Internet marketing is pricing policy. On the one hand, this is due to an objective reduction in transaction costs for sellers, due to which small virtual entities can compete with large traditional market participants. On the other hand, the main motive for making an online purchase if the product is available is its comparatively lower price. Transaction costs in e-commerce are much lower than in conventional trading. Therefore, the price opportunities for attracting buyers from virtual companies are much greater than in traditional businesses.

Only third place in importance in Internet marketing is occupied by product policy. This circumstance is due to the fact that virtual companies are not engaged in production and do not promote goods, but information about goods. E-commerce provides significantly greater mobility in choosing goods and suppliers than conventional trade. In the network economy, competitive advantage in the market is created not by products, but by methods of their promotion. The strategic winner is not the one who has the goods, but the one who has the ability to promote them. The best example is the online auction eBay, with revenue in 2011 of $11.65 billion (an increase of 27%) and net profit of $3.23 billion (an increase of 79%).

Last in importance in Internet marketing is communication policy, just as in traditional marketing mix. It is very simple to prove this thesis, since communications are not capable of promoting a product if the product is: a) unavailable, b) more expensive than analogues, d) does not meet consumer expectations. This tool only works when there are no problems with the previous three Internet marketing tools.

The Internet marketing tools, like the traditional marketing mix tools, fit into the framework of the well-known “4P” concept. Four elements are enough to reveal the main directions, tools and methods of Internet marketing in the network economy. The difference lies only in changing the order of the elements of the marketing mix.

ElementI. Sales policy in Internet marketing. Sales policy in Internet marketing includes three main components of traditional marketing: exchange and transactions, relationships between partners and interaction with customers. However, the specifics of virtual space fill them with new, different from the previous content:

1. Exchange and transactions. According to classical marketing theory, exchange is at the core of any commercial activity. " Marketing appears at that moment, – writes F. Kotler, – when people decide to satisfy needs and wants through exchange" Whereas transactions in marketing theory are understood as “ exchange of value between two or more parties».

It is the low transaction costs on the Internet that make it possible to create and use an unlimited number of specialized sales channels that are cheap to operate, operate around the clock in automatic mode (24-7-365). And as long as there is an imbalance in transaction costs between traditional trade and e-commerce, the guaranteed profits from using electronic distribution channels will be more important than the inconsistent profits from traditional forms of marketing.

A consequence of the development of e-commerce has been a reduction in the role of traditional trading infrastructure in transactions. If the importance of warehouse and transport infrastructure remains virtually unchanged, then the trade infrastructure (counters, showrooms, sellers, etc.) is successfully replaced by electronic catalogs and price lists. That's why The main function of sales policy in Internet marketing does not imply the creation of sales channels, but the use of opportunities available on the network in order to ensure the presence of goods in various segments of the virtual market.

In e-commerce, distances have lost their importance, and the trade infrastructure (wholesale and retail links) has dropped out of the trade network. What happened was what P. Doyle called “ separating information from the product", when the intermediary deals not with goods, but with information about these goods. As a result, commodity flows in distribution channels gave way to information flows, and trade in goods turned into information support for direct supplies of goods.

Provided there is sufficient logistics support, participants in Internet marketing distribution channels do not require their own warehouses, retail space, or sales personnel. The manufacturer himself or through logistics intermediaries ensures the possibility of offering goods (availability of goods, delivery conditions and payment acceptance).

2. Relationships between partners. The development of e-commerce has led not only to a change in sales policy in Internet marketing, but also to a change in the nature of the relationships between participants in the sales system. This is due to the emergence of such a concept as “e-sourcing”, which means “ tools that allow you to identify potential suppliers and, during negotiations, negotiate with them the terms that lead to the lowest costs" Thanks to e-sourcing, the implementation of sales functions and the distribution of orders have finally moved from the sphere of management to the sphere of marketing.

The transformation has become so profound that it has required a radical overhaul of the content and functionality of some of the foundational marketing tools. This primarily affected advertising. E-commerce has turned the very essence of online advertising inside out, turning it from a communication activity into a sales activity.

What is a typical advertising intermediary? This is a person who provides paid intermediary services in conveying information about a product to potential consumers. However, the advertising intermediary bears absolutely no responsibility to the customer for the effectiveness of advertising. It is no coincidence that advertising effectiveness is still assessed in the number of views, audience coverage, frequency of impressions, etc. – in anything, but not in indicators reflecting changes in the customer’s sales indicators as a result of advertising events. Advertisers do not need such responsibility.

New intermediaries, in exchange for their services, along with a trade discount, receive the right to sell the supplier’s goods on the Internet without having them in stock. They do not create inventories at home and do not create turnover costs for the supplier. They compete with each other by promoting (advertising) the supplier's products on the Internet. Their audience has no geographical restrictions, and their offers are concentrated on target audiences. It is these intermediaries that represent electronic distribution channels in Internet marketing today.

In the form of Internet intermediaries, suppliers receive not only a trading infrastructure, a tool for accelerating turnover and a source of information about market conditions, but also free promotion (advertising). They pay for this promotion with a trade discount. However, unlike traditional advertising, payment for intermediary services is strictly dependent on sales indicators, and sales indicators depend on the flexibility of intermediaries.

3. Interaction with customers. Changes in the relationship between sellers and buyers associated with Internet marketing are due to a fundamental change in the essence of the relationship between seller and buyer. Through the Internet, not only the retailer, but also the manufacturer is able to “reach” every customer. For example, through the provision of services after registering on the site and filling out a questionnaire.

Traditional marketing theory distinguishes two types of marketing, distinguished by diametrically opposed approaches to organizing marketing activities. These approaches determine the principles and mechanisms of interaction with potential buyers.

The first kind consumer marketing, is characterized by the lack of proper information among buyers about the real quality of the product. Consumers are guided not by the product, but by the existing stereotype of perception of the product. This implies the primacy of methods and forms of promotion associated mainly with advertising and PR.

Second type, industrial marketing, differs in that buyers have thorough knowledge, if not about the product itself, then about the features of its use. Here, competitive advantage is determined by the level of technological excellence of the product, and the main method of promotion is direct sales.

In traditional marketing, in both cases it was primarily about marketing communications. However, in Internet marketing, communications have ceased to play a decisive role for the following reasons:

a) for individual consumers, detailed information about the product and its use (including negative information) has become publicly available, and the advertising push for the product has lost its effectiveness;

b) industrial consumers now have the opportunity to quickly receive competitive offers and additional information from the entire market, which makes visits from sales representatives unnecessary.

This problem could be partially solved through an authorized dealership system, exclusive discounts, etc. In this case, the most typical traders, in exchange for special delivery conditions, provide the supplier with information about consumers and competitors. However, the adequacy and efficiency of market information received by the supplier from counterparties was still inversely related to the length of sales channels.

ElementII. Pricing policy in Internet marketing. Pricing and pricing policy in e-commerce develop under conditions close to those of ideal competition. No supplier can restrict buyers' access to pricing information and competitive offers. No intermediary is capable of monopolizing the market and dictating terms to the supplier. Moreover, buyers freely exchange information about products among themselves on specialized forums and on social networks.

An example is the IT company Covisint, created in 2004 by the automobile concerns Ford, General Motors, Daimler Chrysler, Nissan and Renault. The main goal of the project was to reduce the cost of producing one car " by 1 thousand dollars by consolidating suppliers, accelerating the design and development of new models, optimizing models and reducing inventory».

Today, only large retailers that are successfully developing this market today can resist the expansion of e-commerce. However, their Internet marketing capabilities are limited by their own specifics. Retailers sell products that are in stock. Despite the benefits of suppliers and huge volumes, there are large inventories and significant transaction costs.

At the same time, traditional pricing policy tools (discounts, bonuses, credits for purchases, price discrimination, etc.) are also present in modern Internet marketing. However, the main trump card of Internet marketing for virtual companies is the ability to competitively reduce prices by reducing transaction costs.

With the transition of marketing to the Internet, price competition of goods and brands has turned into competition of transaction costs. While traditional companies set the upper limit of the price of goods with their costs, virtual companies will take advantage of lower prices due to lower transaction costs.

Internet marketing, on the contrary, uses the prices of traditional manufacturers as its base price. At the same time, sellers are based not on the price expectations of buyers, but on the prevailing prices in traditional trade (see Fig. 1). It is no coincidence that the overwhelming number of advertising campaigns in Internet marketing are based on price comparisons with traditional trade.

Traditional Marketing	Internet Marketing

Virtual companies have no problems either updating price tags or maintaining accounting records. They deal with intangible (information) resources and can “ offer faster payments and solutions throughout the supply chain" This circumstance is due to the fact that although everything ultimately comes down to the sale of real goods, the area of decision-making on prices is located in virtual space.

ElementIII. Product policy in Internet marketing. According to marketing theory, a product is “ anything that can be offered to satisfy a human need or want. … The value of material products lies not so much in their possession, but in their ability to satisfy certain needs».

An important advantage of Internet technologies is that they enable sellers to move from selectively collecting information about the real demand for goods to receiving complete information about it automatically “24-7-365”. Based on this advantage, a new concept has even been formed in the theory of Internet marketing, called “ individual marketing concept».

In Internet marketing, information about almost all competitive offers on the market can be easily found within a few minutes. The individual characteristics of the product are gradually moving into the “all other things being equal” category, and the sales conditions are approaching the conditions of perfect competition. A product is either on the market or it is not there. Therefore, goods in the traditional sense have largely lost their marketing appeal for sellers. As P. Doyle notes about this: “ In the modern economy, the service sector is twice as large as the manufacturing sector, and is growing much faster».

As a result, there was a transformation of the semantic content of the very concept of “product”. Logistics services for searching, purchasing, delivering and paying for what was previously called goods began to be called goods. Competition in Internet marketing has shifted from the sphere of commodity production to the sphere of logistics support for sales.

Therefore, a kind of starting point in the formation of the foundations of product policy in Internet marketing was not general marketing, but marketing of services, which has certain specifics. The concept of “internal marketing” has been around for quite some time. " Purpose of internal marketing, – writes F. Kotler, – is to help employees provide the customer with goods or services with which he will be satisfied».

In other words, internal marketing is directed inside the company in order to increase its adequacy to market requirements. This leads to the peculiarities of distribution of marketing powers. If in product marketing the marketing department performs the lion's share of marketing functions, then in the service sector, on the contrary, the marketing department accounts for a minimal part of them. The main marketing burden in the service sector falls on the shoulders of employees who directly interact with clients.

In Internet marketing, product policy in the service sector is filled with new, additional content. Instead of in-house personnel, internal marketing is refocused on the logistics intermediaries performing its functions. What is happening is what P. Doyle called “ disintegration of value chains and reform of industries" Participants in the online commerce process have absolute independence in relation to each other. Each of them provides consumers with its own service in its field of activity.

Integration of the efforts of supply chain participants under a single leadership in Internet marketing is practically absent. This is the basis of their competitiveness, since each subject of marketing activity goes beyond the boundaries of their industry, thus diversifying their market potential. For example, the same logistics intermediary, due to its narrow specialization, can equally successfully participate in the promotion of medical services and the improvement of automotive technologies.

All marketing efforts in Internet marketing product policy are aimed not at ensuring a unique selling proposition (USP), but at satisfying the individual needs of consumers. As P. Doyle notes: “ Production[services and goods] to order, not for orders" Hence the main marketing task of virtual companies is to find a competitive niche in the market and hold it for as long as possible. Such a niche may be associated either with more or less exclusive supply conditions, or with a competitive presence in a narrow target market. In general marketing theory, this approach to marketing organization is called the “network approach.”

From the perspective of the theory of consumer behavior, in e-commerce there has been a peculiar transfer of transaction costs from producers to buyers. They choose the services of which logistics intermediaries they will use. " The task of marketing is to– note M. Christopher and H. Pack, – to find ways to increase customer value by improving the quality of perceived benefits and/or reducing total operating costs».

It can even be argued that product policy in Internet marketing places the main emphasis not so much on reducing the costs of promotion participants, but on reducing the costs of buyers. Thanks to this, on the one hand, greater freedom of choice is provided for buyers, and on the other hand, the attractiveness of the product offering increases.

ElementIV. Communication policy in Internet marketing. The development of online commerce has significantly changed the nature of marketing communications. From a tool of informational influence on the audience, communications have turned into a tool for dialogue with customers and counterparties, as well as a tool for making collective decisions in Internet marketing. Thanks to the Internet, they have become interactive.

F. Kotler writes: “ Today, communications are viewed as an interactive dialogue between a company and its consumers. They are carried out at the stages before the purchase, its completion, consumption and after consumption" Sellers were able to operate with marketing information not only about each product, but also about each buyer, about each purchase of this buyer. This made it possible to combine two mutually exclusive approaches to building marketing communications: transaction marketing and relationship marketing.

Deal Marketing initially dominated the marketing practices of companies in the United States and Japan due to their export orientation and the long length of trade channels. It means a focus on selling standardized consumer goods to mass buyers.

Relationship Marketing dominated the practice of European companies due to their high costs and limited markets. It means establishing long-term relationships with customers and a personalized approach to serving them.

Internet marketing has made markets limitless and allowed for personalized service to a large number of customers. On the one hand, communications with target audiences and individual clients have become possible on the Internet. On the other hand, it became possible to automate the maintenance of marketing databases and individual contacts with partners and clients. As a result, marketing communications on the Internet have become individualized, automated, and impersonal at the same time.

This circumstance led to the formation of a special type of logistics intermediaries responsible for ensuring information interaction in the virtual environment. We are talking about the use of the so-called in communications. " CRM systems» ( Customer Relationship Management) – software tools for automating interaction with customers and counterparties. CRM systems are used today to collect and process marketing information, as well as to speed up the exchange of commercial information both within the company and between partners.

A CRM system as a model of interaction with partners in Internet marketing makes the client the main object of marketing analysis. This is the fundamental difference between CRM and logistics automated systems, where the object of analysis is the internal economic parameters of logistics flows. The main purpose of CRM systems is to provide automation processes for electronic sales and customer service on the Internet. CRM systems automate the collection, processing and analysis of information about contractors, suppliers and consumers, as well as information flows within companies of varying degrees of virtuality.

An example is the CRM system of the German company SAP AG. The core of this system is a client database, on the basis of which users analyze the effectiveness of their contacts with clients, client connections, the history of their purchases, contracts, etc. As stated in the company's reference manual, the CRM system " allows you to analyze clients in various aspects and build models of their behavior, incl. based on the history of working with them" Using the capabilities of CRM systems, the seller can determine in advance the target audience for marketing communications, sales potential, offer parameters and other characteristics of communications. All that remains is to bring commercial offers to those buyers in the target market who really need them. Fortunately, Internet technologies make it possible to do both automatically, sometimes even without human intervention.

Technologization concerns all components of communications in Internet marketing, turning them into purely technical functions for promoting a product. It is no coincidence that F. Kotler points out that e-commerce changes the purpose of advertising in Internet marketing “ more informational than persuasive" character.

An example is the once so popular SEO ( SsearchEngineOoptimization) – search engine optimization of websites, which is “ the process of achieving first places in search results in search engines for company-targeted queries" Just a few years ago, e-commerce was associated with the creation of online stores, the traffic of which directly depended on the rating of information about the site in the search engines Yandex, Google, Rambler, etc. There are still a huge number of virtual companies offering to “raise” the rating for a reasonable fee site.

For example, the Molotok trading platform offers free creation and maintenance of an online store with a logo and a unique address for legal entities. The commission ranges from 2 to 5.5% from the sale of goods. Registered sellers receive free sales management tools and access to an audience of 500,000 potential buyers transacting over 10,000 transactions daily. Registered Hammer users can use free options to organize promotional sales of products with discounts or paid options to display products on the main page.

This is the key trend in the development of marketing Internet communications and online trading in general. The increasing accessibility of e-commerce is simultaneously driven by the increasing complexity of Internet technologies for developers and the simplification of marketing solutions for end users. Communications develop on the Internet not vertically, but horizontally.

An important feature of marketing communications on the Internet is that the virtualization of electronic sales leads not only to “ disintegration of value chains" Buyers, thanks to the individualization of sales, become full participants in marketing relations. They themselves form virtual communities with resellers, interacting directly with suppliers of goods. For example, when young mothers unite on a social network to order a batch of children's clothing.

As a result, the line between external and internal marketing is blurred. Regular customers become part of the virtual sales infrastructure and the recipient of transforming intra-company (internal) communications. They themselves begin to actively engage in reverse marketing aimed at intermediaries and the seller, and influence the marketing decisions made.

1. Building a culture of customer service– transformed into the formation of norms and rules for the implementation of marketing communications. For example, if a seller at an eBay online auction fails to comply with the sales rules, the buyer has the right to open a dispute in the PayPal payment system and automatically receive payment back. Everything happens automatically and communications turn into an internal, purely technical process.

2. Marketing approach to human resources management– is transformed into marketing approaches to finding and ensuring interaction with partners, buyers and logistics intermediaries. Internet companies increasingly have virtual structure, where alliances are created for projects and orders, and each participant in the relationship is absolutely independent and independent. In this situation, communications are aimed at ensuring unity virtual organization and coordination of efforts to achieve common goals.

3. Organization of internal flows of marketing information– in electronic commerce, as mentioned above, the line between internal and external information flows is blurred. The buyer, by joining the seller’s marketing communications, becomes part of his communication infrastructure, in which information flows simultaneously in two directions.

4. System of rewards and recognition among employees– transforms into a system of profit distribution between virtual partners and into a system of virtual status. On the one hand, employee recruitment takes place in virtual professional communities, where the successes and achievements of each participant are the key to business proposals in the future. On the other hand, for example, any trading platform provides an individual rating system for sellers.

SAP solution for customer relationship management (SAP CRM). – Walldorf (Baden): SAP AG, 2008. –S. 8.

Virin F.Yu. Internet Marketing. A complete collection of practical tools. – M.: Eksmo, 2010. – P. 94.

For more details see: Electronic website trading platform"Molotok.Ru". – http://molotok.ru/country_pages/168/0/shops/index.php#shops3

the main task program - to prepare a new generation of highly professional managers with competencies in managing business processes and commercial projects of the company using all the capabilities of the electronic environment, as well as managing electronic business.

Get only the most useful, relevant, practical information in the field of Internet marketing and e-commerce;

- learn about innovative methods and effective practices for organizing Internet marketing and e-commerce in modern companies;

- learn about the principles of working with social media on behalf of the company;

Learn to identify the main characteristics of the Internet audience;

- gain skillsplanning, organizing and controlling a comprehensive online marketing system with an emphasis on company promotion;

Form of study	Part-time
Cost of education	108,000 rubles (installments in 2 stages: 54 tr. and 54 tr.)
Duration of training	7 months
Number of hours	502 hours
Start date of training	October 30, 2019
The contact person	Kabelkaite Julia
Telephone	8 903 784 67 88, 8 495 800 1200 (1788)
Email	[email protected] ,
Acceptance of documents	recruitment is open

Curriculum


Compulsory disciplines	Elective disciplines (3 out of 5)
1. Internet marketing in the marketing system. 2. Technologies of integrated Internet marketing. 3. E-commerce. 4. Integrated promotion of brands on the Internet and social media (SMM).	2. Digital PR. 3. Design thinking for Internet projects. 4. Content marketing. 5. Mobile app as an e-commerce tool.

Compulsory disciplines

Elective disciplines (3 out of 5)

1. Internet marketing in the marketing system.

2. Technologies of integrated Internet marketing.

3. E-commerce.

4. Integrated promotion of brands on the Internet and social media (SMM).

2. Digital PR.

3. Design thinking for Internet projects.

4. Content marketing.

5. Mobile app as an e-commerce tool.

Document issued upon completion of training:

How to proceed:

Requirements for students

Documents for admission

Persons with secondary vocational or higher education are allowed to complete the program.

Copy of education diploma with attachment;

Copy of passport 1 page (with photo) and 2 pages (with registration);

A copy of the work record (if available) or a certificate from the place of work;

3 photographs 3x4.

Collecting marketing information allows you to correctly allocate enterprise resources and accurately position yourself in the market, which ultimately affects the reduction of costs and/or increased sales. Any commercial activity begin with marketing research. If on a website you are able to collect statistical information about potential buyers, their characteristics, preferences and tastes, then you will save money on surveys and questionnaires by telephone or other means.

The ultimate goal of marketing activities on the Internet always comes down to attracting the maximum number of users from the target audience. That is, on the one hand, information focused on customer requests must be collected. On the other hand, it is necessary to stimulate site visits by the maximum number of users from a given audience. And the task of identifying that part of the audience that is of marketing interest is a special task of events on the Internet.

To achieve the goal of the Internet project, it is necessary to go through the following stages sequentially.

Some of the listed stages, unfortunately, are often missed. Some of them are carried out by people who are not directly related to them, do not have sufficient administrative resources, etc., which leads to incorrect actions in implementing the Internet project and, as a consequence, to a lack of results.

Thus, the Internet project should become one of the management tools marketing policy companies. With a successful combination of Internet activities and marketing plans, it is possible to achieve significant sales growth and cost reduction. It must be said that for companies of almost any profile, information representation on the Internet can be of great benefit. The most successful use of the Internet is in cases where the potential audience, by design, is wide enough. Rarely does it become completely broad, meaning that your audience will usually have traits and characteristics that differ from the general one. Therefore, before you start creating an information presence on the Internet, evaluate how easy or difficult it is to find your audience on the Internet.

Anyway, modern marketing is not only about developing a good product, determining its price and delivering it to customers. In addition, companies must constantly interact with customers - both current and potential. In this case, you need to use all the means available today. For many companies, the question is no longer whether to use the Internet, but what budget to allocate for it and how to distribute it.

UDC 004.738.5:334.7 BBK 73:65.9(2)29 K - 93

Svetlana Anatolyevna Kurochkina, senior lecturer of the Department of Marketing and Logistics, Faculty of Finance and Economics, Maykop State University University of Technology, e-mail: sveta [email protected]

THE ROLE OF INTERNET MARKETING AND E-COMMERCE IN MODERN

ENTERPRISE

(reviewed)

The article outlines methods of selling goods and services using Internet technologies, electronic payments, as well as other areas of using Internet marketing. In addition, attention is paid to the implementation of e-commerce in the enterprise.

Keywords: internet, online store, internet marketing, electronic

commerce, e-business, electronic payments.

Kurochkina Svetlana Anatolievna, a senior lecturer of the chair of marketing and logistics of financial and economic faculty, Maikop State Technological University, e-mail: [email protected]

THE ROLE OF INTERNET MARKETING AND E-COMMERCE IN THE MODERN

The article outlines ways of selling goods and services using Internet technologies, electronic payments, as well as other areas of internet marketing. In addition, it focuses on the introduction of e-commerce in enterprise.

Keywords: Internet, Internet shopping, Internet marketing, electronic commerce, electronic business, electronic payments.

E-commerce is commerce that is built solely on the basis of an Internet sales channel and has no other distribution channels. It can also be said that with e-commerce there is only a virtual point of sale. Unlike the concept of e-commerce, for e-business the Internet channel is not the only one, but another, additional distribution channel. These channels are intertwined with each other, forming a combined sales channel, and the subject of sales is any, including traditional goods and services. We can say that combined sales channels use e-commerce subsystems. For the industrial sector, which supplies physical goods, this is the only possible form working with buyers via the Internet.

The difference between traditional business and electronic business is only in the method of doing business, which is described by the formula of the four “Ps” - Product, Price, Place, Promotion. Combined sales channel, which is inherent e-business, changes all 4 “Rs”, to one degree or another. But in order to change them correctly, you need to know well what they represent for your enterprise.

An online store is a way of selling goods using Internet technologies. The peculiarities of selling via the Internet are such that you can sell anything, to anyone. The main thing is that it is convenient for both sellers and buyers. Because it is not the product itself that is transmitted through digital channels, but information about it. For the mass retail buyer, the number of goods that can be sold via the Internet is not very large - the private buyer wants to feel the product before paying money for it. For industrial products and corporate buyers, the opposite is true. Purchase of goods in absentia, by non-cash payments for them it is more a practice than an exception. It is convenient for them to work via the Internet - clearly and quickly. This is just a new step in cashless distance trading, which has many advantages over others.

As for payments via the Internet, oddly enough, this is not a mandatory component of e-commerce. Payments are just a stage in the sales cycle. Just as the transfer of the product or service itself does not necessarily take place via Internet channels, payments may or may not be electronic. Indeed, making payments via the Internet in our conditions is the most problematic place, so the meaning of the term “electronic commerce” is undergoing some changes compared to the meaning that is given to it in the homeland of the term - in the USA. For electronic payments, a number of alternatives and options are offered that are relevant to our reality, while in the USA (and throughout the rest of the civilized world) a bank plastic (credit) card has migrated from traditional commerce to the Internet as the only acceptable electronic means of payment. And for both individuals and corporations. Since the use of plastic cards for payments for online purchases began quite a long time ago, all issues related to the security of transferring card data via Internet channels have been more or less successfully resolved. I repeat, in civilized countries, which we are certainly also moving towards. Our problem is that we, in principle, did not have a developed credit system, and cards as a means of payment are poorly used in Russia.

In addition to the first two misconceptions, there is some concept that e-commerce is an independent, self-contained business. This also raises doubts - to what extent is the Internet sales channel, being the only channel in this business concept, capable of generating profit? It is necessary to divide e-commerce into subtypes: an independent business focusing on the Internet channel as the only sales channel, and auxiliary services for an existing, well-established business. In the second case, we are talking about e-commerce at the service of the enterprise, as well as the creation of combined channels for the sale of goods and services, with elements of e-commerce in the traditional sales cycle.

What benefits does the implementation of e-commerce systems give to an enterprise?

1. Information about goods and services circulates faster. In fact, you get an additional communication channel open 24/7 (turnover included in English language in connection with the development of e-commerce and denoting work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week). You are more accessible to the client geographically and in time, and they also get a new means of searching and working with information.

2. Internal information (documents, official correspondence, making and approving decisions, etc.) is processed faster. Expanded ability to control execution. In other words, all business processes are accelerated due to the availability and speed of information transfer.

3. The Internet offers new services for customers - for example, order tracking. Availability additional services creates a competitive advantage and brings new visitors to you.

4. Since the Internet is a technological shell, it allows you to collect important information about your clients. In addition, it allows you to use marketing tools - surveys, mailings, etc. quickly and without additional costs.

5. With all this, e-commerce systems will help save on personnel.

6. Sometimes you can save on renting space for retail space.

The range of issues that arise when implementing e-commerce systems can be divided into three groups:

1. Ideological issues. First of all, you need to identify your need for e-commerce implementation. It depends on the type of business, the reach of potential consumers via the Internet, the market situation, etc. It may also turn out that some areas of your activity are more promising for selling via the Internet than others, i.e. After a positive answer to the question “Is it worth it?” you need to decide what and how exactly to do. And also in what order. In other words, you need to write a design assignment (system project) and an implementation plan (ideally, create a working group of enterprise specialists and an external consultant and develop such a document jointly).

2. Technological issues. These include the question of choosing a developer and related questions about choosing a web development technology and hosting provider.

3. Organizational issues. Who will manage the site, support it, post information on it, be responsible for its operation, functionality, performance? Who will promote your business online? It is necessary to develop regulations for the site support group, think about implementing staffing table new specialists, as well as whether there is a contradiction between the already established style of work and new trends. And also think about how to organize a system for delivering information to the site. The most painless way is to supplement job responsibilities specialists from all departments working with the website.

Organizational issues are the most difficult. Where it is not possible to solve them effectively, all costs for the first two points go downhill. Often the issue comes down to the fact that the system has not been built, there is no understanding of the essence of the processes and their importance for the common cause - the company's business. Sometimes there is understanding, but there are no specialists. Or there is one specialist who is responsible for everything related to the Internet - and this is a huge range of issues that one person simply cannot solve. A bottleneck is created that limits throughput new sales channel.

The most difficult thing is that there is no standard solution for organizational issues. That’s probably why there is a biased attitude towards e-commerce in Russia: we don’t have our own experience, we can’t copy someone else’s (a vain search for a standard solution!), it takes years in vain to create our own ACS department, and it’s a pity to spend money - it’s not clear what will happen . And competitors are not asleep. There is a way out: take the issue of e-commerce as seriously as other areas of the enterprise. With all the ensuing consequences.

And e-commerce has a right to life in Russia. The question is how we exercise this right.

Literature:

1. Ladonina L. Book of the Internet project manager. Ready-made marketing solutions / L. Ladonina. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2008. - 256 p.

2. Ladonina L. E-commerce - the right to life in Russia / L. Ladonina. - Access mode: http: // www.expertum.ru.

Kaluzhsky M.L. Magazine "Practical Marketing". – 2013. – No. 1. – P. 4-16. – ISSN 2071-3762

​Document issued upon completion of training:

How to proceed:

Document issued upon completion of training: